アメリカの高校生がホークスのスカウト業務の職業体験をしたお話。
皆さん、こんにちは。スカウト部 スカウティングコーディネーターの牧田です。
スカウト部では7月下旬から8月上旬まで、アメリカの高校に通うジェームズ・クラベル君を職業体験として招き、ホークスの仕事のお手伝いをしてもらいました。
自身も野球をしているというジェームズ君には、スカウト業務として、アマチュア野球の試合中の動画撮影やストップウォッチ、スピードガンを使った数値計測をはじめ、簡単な分析業務にも挑んでもらいました。
開始当初、偉い人の前では緊張でポケットに両手を入れて話してしまう「高校生ジェームズ」でしたが、出社最終日には日本語で「お世話になりました！」と頭を下げてオフィスを後にする成長した姿には、業務内容以外の面でも感慨深いものがありました。
そんなジェームズ君に今回の職業体験の総括として簡単なレポートを書いてもらいましたので、ぜひご覧いただければと思います。
Hi, I’m James Clavel. I am 18 years old and originally from New York City, though growing up I lived all over Asia, including in Tokyo for four years. I have always been extremely interested in baseball, and I have been playing the sport since I was eight. I also love watching baseball and am a huge Yankees fan.
Because of my huge interest in baseball, I have always wanted to work with a baseball team. Added onto my experience in Japan and familiarity with both the language and the culture, I thought that interning with the Hawks would be the perfect opportunity for me. With the Hawks, I was able to do various tasks and learned a lot from all of them. I scouted players at the Industrial league tournament, studied analytics of foreign players in Japan, observed many pro-level baseball games, and ended off by watching koshien baseball. I really enjoyed these tasks as they gave me a view into the baseball world. I love watching baseball, so it was great, but I was also able to experience what it was like in a front office or scouting players.
The most memorable experience for me was watching the all-star game. I had a really great time watching all the best players in Japan and felt really lucky that it was held in Fukuoka. It was also awesome when Kiyomiya hit the walk-off home run, as I played youth baseball in Tokyo with his brother.
In terms of sports and business in America and Japan, I felt that they were pretty similar. The level of baseball is very high quality in both places, and while there are differences that I mentioned in my presentation, it is still baseball and was very much alike. The one thing about baseball though, in Japan, is that it seems that the sport brings people together a lot more than in the US. Koshien and Toshitaikou games both brought tons of people to cheer on their coworkers or classmates, and even in pro games people bring drums to cheer on players whom they don’t know. You can’t find that kind of spirit and unity in America, and it was spectacular to see. From a foreigner’s perspective, I thought the NPB could improve upon things like pace of play and entertainment, but it seemed that the regular fans liked them, and if it’s not a problem to them I wouldn’t change anything.
I am excited to apply what I learned with the Hawks to America and future jobs that I might have. Working as part of a professional sports team is a dream that I have, and hopefully, this was the start of a long journey and career. I hope to apply my knowledge of scouting, how to look at data, analyze it, and find trends, and general procedure in a front office to whatever comes next.
Thank you everybody at the Hawks for a great opportunity and for allowing me to learn so much!
（文：James Clavel）